


Counting Cards

by AstridMyrna



Series: Reylo Rendezvous [6]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Christmas, Christmas Cards, Christmas Fluff, Comfort, Cuddling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Christmas, Ice Skating, cheese cake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 09:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13074441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridMyrna/pseuds/AstridMyrna
Summary: Ben Solo checks his mail expecting nothing but bills and junk, and is surprised to find a Christmas card--only, the card is addressed to his new next door neighbor Rey.





	Counting Cards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deathbyhook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deathbyhook/gifts).



> Merry Christmas Deathbyhook! I hope you like long one shots because this went WAY longer than originally intended, but will hopefully get you into the Christmas mood.
> 
> Edited to smooth out the bumps and slightly tweak the ending, thank you L!

_Saturday, December 1 st_

Ben Solo opens his slim mail box, one out of the block of sixteen apartment mailboxes welded to the wall in the tiny brick lobby, and pulls out a bill, a grocery story ad, and a thick red envelope. His dark eyebrows knit together as he flips over the card and reads his address, but his new next door neighbor Rey's name is on it instead of his. He’s about to leave the envelope on top of the mail boxes when he feels the edges of a gift card inside.

He sucks his lips in thought as he studies the loopy hand writing with a little star drawn at the end of the “y” in Rey’s name and the two poinsettia stamps with New York’s USPS’ ink stamp over it. New York, huh? This card travelled a long way to get to San Francisco. It’d be a shame for it to get stolen because the sender wrote “Apt. 301” instead of “Apt. 302.”

Ben collects the envelope with the rest of his mail and takes the elevator to level three, walks down the dimly lit hallway to 302, and knocks on the door. Something clatters inside, a shout for him to wait a minute, the clacks of the lock, and the door flings open to reveal a young British woman wearing gray sweatpants, a pink shirt with bleach splotches on its front, and halzenut brown hair tied up in a high bun and purple handkerchief headband.

“Oh! Hello. Ben, was it?” Rey says as she wipes her nose with the back of her arm.

Ben blinks a few times from the strong fumes of bleach and ammonia wafting out of the place, but he puts on a polite smile.

“This was in my mailbox, but I believe this is for you,” he says as he holds the card out.

Rey snatches it out of his hands to read it.

“Oh! Rose must have misheard me over the phone about the number. I’m sorry about that, but thank you for bringing it to me.”

“No problem. Have a good day,” he says as he made for his apartment.

“You too!” she replies before she closes her door.

He enters his apartment and rubs his eyes until they water and clear. He doesn’t know how Rey can stand it and not pass out from the fumes, but that was her problem and not his.

* * *

_Monday, December 3 rd _

Ben comes home early from work, so he checks his mailbox to find a new grocery ad, two postcard dental ads, and a small white card with Rey’s name on his address. He smirks and feels for a gift card, but there’s only a plain card inside. Well, she’s right next door, and if she isn’t home, he’ll put the envelope on top of the mailboxes.

She’s home when he knocks on her door again, but the fumes are gone and she wears casual clothes instead of cleaning ones.

“Now I know I told Jessika 302, she must have misremembered,” Rey laughs. “Thanks for bringing it to me again. I already sent my Christmas cards already, so I hope I got their addresses right.”

“I’m sure you did. Have a good day.”

“You too!”

He enters his apartment and pulls a beer out of the fridge, still amused by the mix-up that made this Monday a little more interesting.

* * *

_Wednesday, December 5 th _

Ben knocks three times on Rey’s door, one knock for each festive-colored envelope in his hand.

“I’m sensing a pattern here,” he says bluntly when she opens the door.

Rey gapes at the envelopes as he hands them to her. She checks all of the addresses, a loose fist covering her pursed lips.

“Oh no,” she groans, “I think I might have given them the wrong address when I moved here.”

He wonders when she gave everyone the wrong address since she's lived in his building for about two months already, but it's probably too late now to tell everyone the right address.

“I guess I should be expecting some mail, then,” Ben says.

“You can leave it on top of the mailbox and I can pick it up as soon as I come back from work.”

“That’s a good way for it to get stolen. I can just keep it in my mailbox and you can let me know when you want to pick it up and I can get it.”

She presses the envelopes against her thick, sky-blue sweater, her thin silver necklace hooking over their bruised edges.

“I mean, if it’s no trouble—”

“No trouble at all. All I get are bills and junk mail anyway,” he says with a shrug.

Her face warms with her smile. “Well, thank you. And I’m sorry again, I’ll make sure everyone has the right address next year.”

He enters his apartment and pulls a beer out of the fridge, takes a swig, and grunts as the cold, bitter drink slithers down his throat. She can’t have that many friends and family willing to mail out Christmas cards, can she?

* * *

  _Saturday, December 8 th _

In the afternoon Ben and Rey huddle by his mailbox so he can pry out the piles of envelopes in every shade of red, green, blue, silver, and gold to give her. She stacks them neatly in a paper bag, but pulls out a big white envelope and hands it back to him.

“This one’s for you actually, Ben,” she says with an elvish grin on her face.

He eyes her for a moment before reading and discovering that the envelope is addressed to him, but it has Rey on the return address.

“You mailed this?” he chuckles. “You could have saved on the stamp and handed it to me.”

Her grin sours into a frown as she huffs, “You said all you got were junk and bills, so I wanted to send you something other than that.”

He looks at her, then down at his neatly written address, and back up at her again. His ears burn as he realizes that he insulted her when he meant to be helpful.

“Thank you for the card,” he says, hoping that would patch things up. “I wasn’t expecting it.”

She snorts out a laugh and they take the elevator up to their level together before splitting.

He enters his apartment and tears the envelope in half to get at the thin card he’s seen stocked in checkout lines at Trader Joe’s: a minimalist drawing of a polar bear wearing a tacky Christmas sweater and a pair of sunglasses against a bright blue background. Inside is a short note written in half print, half cursive:

_Ben,_

_Thanks again for keeping my Christmas cards safe. I am very lucky to have such a nice neighbor. :)_

_Happy Holidays,_

_Rey_

“I’m not that nice,” Ben grumbles to himself, but he puts the card on the center of his square, stainless steel dining table next to the window, the only Christmas decoration in the whole apartment.

Ben buys gifts and has them wrapped in time for Christmas, shows up at the Christmas work party, and visits his family on Christmas Day. It’s a special day for most, another day in the year for him. No need to waste time and money on decorations he’d have to pay keep in storage for the years to come. Though he has to admit, Rey’s card does add some brightness to his dark apartment, what with his long black couch, black ceiling-high bookcase, black wide-screen T.V., charcoal gray walls, and ceiling lights caged in black iron.

He takes a beer out of the fridge, the Scott Lynch novel he’s a quarter of the way through from the bookcase, and sits on the dining table to read. He sets the bottle on a napkin to soak up the dribbling condensation so it doesn’t ruin the card standing next to it.

* * *

  _Friday, December 16 th _

Frantic knocking brings Ben to his door at 10 at night. When he opens it, he’s greeted by Rey’s flushed face.

“I’m sorry I’m calling so late, Ben, but you wouldn’t have any spare wrapping paper, do you? I have to finish wrapping so I can get to the post office when it opens tomorrow and mail my presents and everywhere’s clo—”

Ben holds up a hand to stop her. “Yeah, I have a roll in here somewhere. I just need to look for it.”

He invites her in and she sits on the edge of the couch, wringing her hands in her lap as she looks around at every inch of his apartment. He retreats to his bedroom and digs out the massive roll of cheap red Christmas paper with a silver imprint of Santa’s face on it he bought at Cosco years ago. When he comes out with the roll, her entire face lights up and she sighs in relief.

“This is all I have,” he says as he hands it to her.

“This is _perfect_ , thank you, thank you!” she nearly cries as she cradles the roll in her arms. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

“It’s only wrapping paper, and I get everything professionally wrapped now, so you can keep it.”

“I still appreciate it. Did any cards come in the mail for me today, by chance?”

“No, but I’ll keep an eye out for stragglers.”

Her cheery face deflates a little bit, but she still smiles when she says, “Thanks anyway, Ben.”

When Ben closes the front door after she leaves, he hangs on to the door knob a moment, realizing that Rey is the first person he’s invited inside his apartment in many, many months. The apartment feels hollow now that she’s left, even though she was only inside with him for a few minutes.

* * *

  _Saturday, December 17 th_

Night falls on Union Square, and every twinkle light twisted around every manicured branch on the eighty-foot-tall plastic tree lights up in a golden glow, save for the red star on top. The bright light meshes with Macy’s wall of lit up wreaths hanging on each of its eight floors. Ben meanders past the Dewey monument to watch the ice skaters from the side lines, and he sees himself in the kids who fall hard, slip trying to get up, and eventually crawl to pull themselves up on the barrier. He can almost hear his Uncle Luke chortle at the sight. His parents never took him here, as they were either too busy or the fact that neither liked skating. Ben didn’t like skating either, still doesn’t, but it was something him and his uncle used to do when he was a kid. Both of them used to fall on their ass, but they’d laugh about it all the way to the chocolate shop.

“Fancy meeting you here,” calls out a familiar British lilt.

Ben turns to see her with folded plastic bags stuffed in her suede jacket, her hair parted in two French braids that peek out from under her white knit cap.

“Have fun at the post office?” he says.

“Yes, I got everything shipped out in time, thanks to you.” She leans against the barrier as he does: back hunched over her folded hands. “What brings you here, though?”

“I don't get a Christmas tree, but I like to visit this one at least once a year. You?”

“My coworker told me how pretty Union Square is at Christmas, so I wanted to come here as soon as I settled in.”

“Does it live up to the hype?”

“That would be any understatement,” she chuckles, then whistles out a sigh. “My coworker was also supposed to meet me here, but she flaked out on me on the last second. I even got her tickets for ice skating and everything, because she said that they sold out fast. Want to go skating with me?”

Ben smirks at her, not quite sure if he understands her right. “You want to go skating with me?”

“Yes, or else I wasted a ticket. C’mon, it’s free and you’re already here.”

He laughs, “It sounds like I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

He’s not laughing when he skates straight-legged next to the barrier at a snail’s pace. Rey speeds past him twice when she finally weaves around him and tugs on his black-gloved hand.

“You look like you need help,” she giggles.

“Yes I do,” he says, letting go of the barrier so they can slip into a faster moving stream of skaters. “How did you get so good at skating?”

“There used to be a pond in my hometown that froze over during the winter. I used to skate there all the time until I was twelve.” She pulls his arm against hers, and her warmth seeps through the stitches of his black jacket and onto his skin. “I fell through some thin ice. I haven’t skated since…well, since now.”

He gazes down at her at a loss of what to say, heat creeping up from his arm to his neck to his ears as she holds on to him tightly. Her face is bright pink as well, but he doesn’t know if it’s from the cold, from the rink lighting, or—

An ice chunk snags his skate and Ben falls down hard on his side and rolls on his back, yanking Rey down with him. She lands on his chest, her face now pink with laughter.

“Are you okay?” she wheezes.

Ben massages the shoulder that took the direct hit down, but he’s smiling and laughing too.

“No need to worry about how thick this ice is,” he says.

She shows him how to get back up one knee at a time before they continue skating along, this time with Rey stopping him from falling on the next ice chunk he hits, and part of his mind is still trying to understand how he found himself ice skating with his next door neighbor and feeling completely comfortable with her. He wobbles, but she steadies him, never letting go of his hand as she guides him around the rink. When she falls, she lets go of him so he can slide helplessly ahead, but soon she’s by his side again and takes his hand as if they had been friends since middle school.

“Have you always lived in San Francisco, Ben?” she asks him.

“I left once for a few years, but I couldn’t stay away forever.”

“For school?”

“I only went to school here, but when I graduated I needed to break away and see what else the world offered.”

“What brought you back?” she asks.

“Work, at first. But then I fell in love with the city again, so I found new work so I could stay. What brought you to San Francisco?”

“Work transferred me here.”

“Do you think you might stay?”

She flits her eyes away from him. “I’m tempted.”

Their legs seize up once they leave the rink and their skates behind, Ben points up at the very top of the Macy’s.

 “If you're hungry, there’s a Cheesecake Factory up there with a view of the whole plaza.”

“I’m starving. Let’s go!”

After the aching shuffle to get to the restaurant and an hour long wait, they are finally seated in the patio. The heat lamps cut through the chill in the air as a piano version of “The Christmas Waltz” floats up into the sky. Ben sips his wine, his eyes tracing over the bulky Saks Fifth Avenue, up to the taller and leaner Tiffany & Co, down to the William-Sonoma and back up and around the grand hotels and ornate office buildings and the bright pearls and rubies of car lights strung around the square like a necklace. He glances at Rey, who is so invested in the scene that her fingertips flatten against glass railing. She catches his eye and smiles at him.

 “I still can’t get over this. The wait was _absolutely_ worth this,” she says.

“I’m glad you think so.”

“You don’t?” she asks, an eyebrow cocked up.

“I do, it’s just been a long time since I’ve been up here. It was the night before I took a hiatus from San Francisco.”

“Like a going away party?”

He smirks. “It was a party of one. I had a falling out with my parents and my uncle and I just needed to be above… _everything_ , for a few hours. My mother’s a state senator and in Sacramento mostly, but we all still have to behave in case anything gets into the media. I was a golden boy for a little while, being a choir singer at my Uncle Luke’s church, making good grades, keeping out of trouble. I was expected to do great things.”

“So what happened?”

“What happened was that I got caught writing and selling essays to my classmates, and after that I didn’t care about looking good anymore. Stopped going to church, didn’t send out college applications to Ivy league and went to a computer science training program in the city instead—”

“Hacking?”

His smile is his only answer, which makes Rey laugh.

“Needless to say my family wasn’t happy with the way my life was going. I picked up a not-so-excellent programming job in Arizona and didn’t see or speak to my family for five years, but that’s all in the past now. Or at least I tell myself that it is. As long as I visit them during holidays and birthdays, they’re happy.”

Rey’s bright smiles dims to a subdued one, and her eyes fall down on her plate of half-eaten cheesecake.

“My parents...I love my parents, but they’re difficult people to live with. I left them when I was 16.  Being around them got a little better after that, but then when I moved to the states three years ago…” she says.

Rey shoves a great glob of cheesecake in her mouth and chases it with the last of her white wine. She looks back up at Ben, her eyes glittering from the twinkle lights.

“What happened?” Ben asks in a softer voice.

“Basically I just got really homesick and miss them a bunch. They aren’t perfect people, but they’re still my parents, you know?”

He suspects more simmering beneath the surface, but he changes the subject to talk about their programming work (she’s at Google, he’s at LucasFilm), and her somberness melts away. They stay late until they can’t eat another bite, ride the Muni home with their doggy bags of cheesecake, take the elevator up to the third floor, and walk together until they are at the midway point between his door and hers.

“Well, that was fun! We should hang out again sometime,” she says.

“We should. I can show you more of the city, too.”

“I’d like that.”

They stand toe to toe with each other, and again Ben is at a loss of what to say next with her eyes shining up at him like that. Did she mean that in a friendly way or…? Did he? How is he so comfortable he is around her, even when she prods him into doing something unexpected like today? Every year he just looked at the lighted tree, got himself a nice dinner and went home, but today snowballed into something else he didn’t have a name for.

“Good night, Ben,” Rey says quickly before she retreats into her apartment.

“Good night,” he calls after her, but she’s already closed the door.

He enters his apartment, opens the fridge but there is no beer. He doesn’t bother turning on the light, so he navigates his way through the darkness with his arms outstretched until he stumbles upon his bed. After kicking off his shoes and burying himself under the sheets, his mind replays snippets of Rey on the rink, his legs stiff and tingling as if he's skating with her again. 

* * *

  _Friday, December 23 rd _

“Here’s the last of them,” Ben says as he hands her two cards from his mailbox.

Ben watches Rey read each address carefully, and he has to put his hand in his pockets to resist touching the strand of hair that’s fallen over her eyebrow. For the last week he had checked his phone often to see when they can meet at his mailbox again. He still doesn’t know what to make of Union Square. Was it really a date if they just met there by coincidence, neither asking the other out? Even if it didn’t start out as a date, by the end of it—these thoughts are pushed aside when she looks up at him with watery eyes.

“These were the only cards in there?” she asks in a clipped tone.

He nods, but she reaches into the mailbox to check herself. When she pulls out nothing, she stamps her foot and leaves him alone in the lobby. He stares at the iron-wrought gate, mouth agape and not knowing what exactly he said to make her angry.

He enters his apartment and checks every nook and cranny for any chance of a card he might have picked up with his own mail by accident. No card is found, except for Rey’s on the dining table. He picks it up and reads the note again.

Was she expecting a card from him? If she did, she looked like she was about to cry when she searched his mailbox. It didn’t make sense. She can’t possibly like him that much. There had to be someone else she was waiting for, someone who held her heart tight enough to break it.

He puts his card back on the table and checks the time. It’s only about four in the afternoon, and the stationary store a couple of blocks down is still open. He throws his jacket back on, locks the place up, and gallops down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. 

* * *

_Saturday, December 24 th_

Ben hurries down the sidewalk back home from a coworker’s party, umbrella close to his head so the rain doesn’t sneak under his collar. Once he gets to the brick building he pulls his glove off with his teeth so he can grab his keys and open the iron gate. He shakes out his umbrella next to the fern in the cracked blue vase until he notices a plump purple and blue bulk sitting under the mailboxes. Ben approaches the bulk and discovers that it’s Rey wearing a purple parka while hiding her face between her jeaned knees.

“Rey?” he asks softly.

“I’m fine,” she barks back, not looking up at him at all.

“Then why are you sitting in a cold lobby under the mailbox?”

“I’m waiting for a Christmas card.”

“It’s after five.”

“I know!” she shouts, her bloodshot eyes glaring at him like it’s his fault she’s sitting here in the first place. She swallows hard, and her shout weakens to a grumble, “The post woman came here earlier and I asked about it and she had nothing for me or for you, and I know that I have one last card coming and it probably got misplaced or stuck between a seat or something. She said she’d come back if she found it, so I’m going to wait until she comes back.”

Ben inhales slowly, holds his breath a moment, and then exhales before leaving her for the stairs. He returns a half an hour later with dry clothes on, a thick gray blanket, a bag of peanut butter pretzel bites, his biggest thermos, and a half a bag of foam cups. Her jaw drops as she watches him settle in next to the mailbox since he’s too tall to sit under it.

“What are you doing?” she gasps.

“Waiting with you.”

“It’s Christmas Eve.”

“I know. Coffee?” he says as he pulls out a foam cup and starts pouring. “I already put some cream and sugar in it if that’s ok.”

“It’s fine…” she breathes, tears welling in her eyes. “Ben, you don’t need to waste your Christmas Eve out here.”

“Neither do you, yet here we are,” he says as he hands her the coffee cup.

He shivers when a gust of wind shrieks inside the lobby, but they’re too far away from the gate to be splashed. His brain starts to catch up with his instinct, and he wonders if he should grab another blanket against the cold. He drapes part of the blanket over his knees and offers the other part to her. Her tight frown wrings out a few tears from her eyes, but she scoots close enough to press against his side before covering her knees with the blanket. He pours himself a cup as she settles in, trying not to think of her cheek against his shoulder.

“So, who waited until the last minute to send you a card?” he says in between sips of his own coffee.

“My parents,” she whispers.

He holds his breath for a moment, feeling his heart sink into his stomach as she continues.

“They live in England, so I always make sure to send them their Christmas card early. They never send one back. I always have to call them to make sure it got there, and it always got there in time. They always promise to send one but…”

“But?”

“But they never do. Do you think they sent me one this year?”

“Probably not.”

She flinches from his bluntness, and he stumbles an apology that she waves off.

“If it does come…that would be a great surprise, wouldn’t it? Like something out of a movie,” Rey says as she wipes her nose on the edge of his blanket.

“It would,” he murmurs.

Something light and warm flutters in his heart that gives him the courage to put an arm around her shoulders. She squirms for a moment, but then he feels her arm slip behind his back and gently squeeze.

“What are your plans tomorrow?” he asks her.

“Stay home, order take out, and watch Netflix.”

 He chuckles and secretly wishes he can do the same.

“If you have time between all that, you’re more than welcome to come with me to Christmas dinner with my family. My Uncle Luke’s hosting it this year.”

She cracks her first smile that night. “I’d love to come and see your family. They live in the city?”

“My parents and grandparents are next door neighbors in Pacific Heights and my Uncle Luke is in the Castro. I have to warn you; they can be a little…dramatic.”

“Sounds like a party to me,” she giggles, wiping her eyes dry. “Do you mind if we stay out here a little longer? I know it’s stupid—”

“We can wait until the coffee runs out.”

She clinks his cup with hers. “Cheers to that.”

* * *

  _Sunday, December 25 th_

Ben wakes up with Rey shivering under the blanket, her body curled up against his chest to hide her face from the frigid air. He shakes her shoulder with numb fingers and calls out her name with his strained, dry voice until she finally cracks an eye open.

“W-We have to g-get inside,” Ben says through chattering teeth, his breath sparkling under the chandelier light. “or w-we’re g-g-g-g-g-g-”

She groans in response and clumsily push her legs forward, only to slam back into the wall. They grapple on to each other, leaving behind the supplies Ben had brought down, and push through their grogginess to stagger towards the elevator. The doors open and they tumble inside. Rey clutches to him as he tries to rub warmth back into her with trembling hands, the white fur trim in Rey’s parka hood tickling his nose.

Rey yanks Ben out of the elevator with her when they reach their floor. It feels like a dream when he’s pulled into the pitch darkness of her apartment, the manufactured heat burning against his face. He falls on a bed and Rey's small arms fasten around his, squeezing him as the tremors ripple through his body.

*

Ben wakes up under foreign sandy-colored sheets, still wearing all of his clothes on except his jacket. He inhales deeply, stretches out and feels a hint of warmth in the crevices of the space next to him as his joints crinkle and crack, then groans as he exhales.

“Sounds like you’re up,” Rey says.

Ben shoots up on the bed, and there she is at the doorway, dressed in yesterday’s clothes (only now the parka's gone and there's a white sweater underneath) and mussed up braids, carrying a steaming mug in each hand.

“Like some tea? I’ve already added the cream and sugar, if that’s all right.”

“Thank you. What time is it?” he asks when Rey gives him his tea.

She sits next to him on the edge of the bed, but there’s an inch of space between their thighs.

“It’s a little after nine. Sorry for making you stay up so late and nearly die of hypothermia.”

“You didn’t make me do anything. I wanted to stay up with you.”

Splotches of pink bloom on her face and her smile is spiteful.

“It’s because I was so pathetic last night. Something in me just snapped when nothing came.” Her voice drops into an icy hush. “They’re always doing this, Ben. Not just the Christmas cards, but all year round. If I didn’t call or email then they wouldn’t respond at all. I could drop off the face of the planet and they wouldn’t even care.”

Ben takes the mug out of her shaking hand before she drops it on the floor. She rubs away the tears and the runny snot off her face, and he puts an arm around her shoulders again. She closes the gap between them and leans on him. He wants to tell her that her parents don’t deserve her, to forget and not be dragged down by what they thought of her. He bites his tongue and swallows that thought down, because even when he was away from home and tried to forget his family, he could not ignore the stab in his gut during every birthday and every holiday, especially Christmas. He wondered every year if his father would finally not dry the turkey out for once, or if Uncle Luke finally decided to change even a sentence of his Christmas sermon, or if his mother would announce her campaign for the U.S. senate at Christmas dinner, or if it would be his grandparents’ last Christmas, and the stab of ignorance plunged deeper and deeper in his gut every year in those lonely times. He feels the old scar again after it had healed when he returned to his family and Christmas became ordinary again.

“Why am I even complaining? I left them when I was 16. I should be glad that they aren’t talking to me, I guess,” she wept.

“Are you?”

“No. I just wish…I want them to want me and they don’t. They didn’t even fight for me in court when I asked to be emancipated. I don’t know what I did wrong, Ben.”

He swallows and weighs his next words on his tongue before he speaks them.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Rey. They’re just blind and unappreciative of the caring person you are, the kind who sends out Christmas cards every year.” He squeezes her shoulder gently, and smiles in spite of himself. “You even sent me a card, and no one sends me cards.”

“Really?” she chuckles and wipes her right eye.

“Really, you’re the only one who sent me a card, because you’re the only person I know who cares enough to mail a Christmas card to her next door neighbor so he has something else besides bills and junk in his mailbox.”

His voice knots up into a burning lump in his throat, his eyes stinging as if he was walking through a cold wind. He feels Rey’s breath on his throat as she pulls closer to him, her brown eyes shiny and clear.

“I’ll make sure to mail you a card every year, then,” she murmurs.

“And I’ll mail you one back, but I hope that you’re okay with…with…hold on, it’s stuck.”

Ben lets go of her and lifts his bottom so he can pull out the slim red envelope from his back pocket, and Rey laughs out loud as he holds it out to her.

“Next year I’ll mail it properly, I promise,” he says.

At first she doesn’t answer as she rips a strip of paper off of the top of the envelope and snatches the card inside. She coos at the fuzzy polar bear and penguin made out of felt walking along a glittery snow drift. Rey clears her throat and begins to read the note inside.

“Dear Neighbor, sorry for not giving this to you sooner, but…” her voice drops off, but she silently mouths the words on the card, and then her mouth stills. Her whole body sits up straighter as she holds the card with a feather-weight touch. 

Rey folds the card and stares at the artwork for a moment, then lays it next to her on the bed.

“Thank you,” she says and weaves her fingers around his. “That was really sweet.”

“It was true,” he whispers, his face leaning towards her.

“I could tell.”

He kisses her first, tasting the salty tang of her tears soaked into her lips. She wraps her free hand around his neck to pull him closer to her. Their joined hands wrap around her waist and secure her hip against his. They break apart for several breaths. Rey presses her forehead between his eyebrows and kisses his nose.

“Merry Christmas, Ben,” Rey whispers.

“Merry Christmas, Rey." He kisses her cheek, pauses before her mouth, and he smiles. "And a happy new year."

They both didn't know it at the time, but when it was time to send Christmas cards again the following year, Rey didn't tell her friends and family to send her cards to 302. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo this ended up being a monster. Hope you liked it! Tried all sort of new writing things with this one. Also the piano version of "The Christmas Waltz" is a reference to Oscar Peterson's rendition of it, give it a listen!


End file.
